The Coffee Mate Abuelita Mexican Hot Chocolate creamer has an abuela’s face on the label. It has the word “chocolate” on the label. What it does not have, per the ingredient list, is cocoa, chocolate, or anything derived from a cacao bean. What it has instead is soybean oil, artificial flavor, and something the label calls “cocoa processed with alkali,” which is to chocolate what a scratch-and-sniff sticker is to a mango. Nestlé owns both Coffee Mate and the Abuelita brand. And someone, somehow, decided this made perfect sense.

But Erick España, an IFBB Pro and founder of Nu Era Performance, noticed. España built a post around nine products sold in the U.S. that trade on Latino culinary names, images, or traditions while replacing the actual ingredients those traditions are built on. His conclusion? “Zero real cultura.”

Reading The Fine Print on Latino Food Labels

España organized his findings by section of the store. He moves from the carnicería to the cafetería to the cocina, and the logic held across every aisle. Cacique beef chorizo lists beef salivary glands, lymph nodes, and fat as its first ingredient, per the label. Then, it’s followed by sodium nitrite and defatted soy grits as fillers. Real chorizo, España notes, is cured pork or beef with dried chiles, vinegar, and garlic. What Cacique is selling is slaughterhouse trim pressed into a log and called by the same name.

The Starbucks Horchata Crème Frappuccino, part of what the chain markets as its “Horchata Family,” contains neither rice nor a soaked cinnamon base. It is cinnamon dolce syrup and whipped cream. Similarly, the Old El Paso flour tortillas España reviewed list palm oil and hydrogenated soybean, palm, and cottonseed oil as primary fats, followed by potassium sorbate and calcium propionate. España notes these preservatives are designed for a shelf life measured in months. Real tortillas are flour, water, fat, and salt. Yes, they go bad in days, but that’s the whole point.

Wait, There’s More

The Maruchan Birria Beef Ramen Bowl contains 1,800 milligrams of sodium per serving. This is 78 percent of the recommended daily intake, along with vegetable oil preserved by TBHQ and four manufactured flavor enhancers. Real birria is goat or beef braised for hours in dried chiles. The same happens with the Pringles Mexican Street Corn. It uses five blended oils and MSG, along with Yellow 5 Lake dye, to produce what the label calls “elote” flavor, with zero corn on the cob involved.

Similarly, the Spicemasters chile-lime seasonings España lack a nutrition facts panel, which is an unusual omission for a food product sold directly to children. The Kellogg’s Zucaritas are Frosted Flakes, same tiger and same formula, relabeled in Spanish and carrying up to 17 grams of added sugar per serving before any milk is added. The Mazola corn oil España closes with is perhaps the most quietly consequential item on the list. It is a single-ingredient product whose “Heart Healthy” label claim España notes rests on limited, preliminary evidence printed directly on the jug. Our abuelas? They cooked in manteca. This bottle and the marketing behind it are most of the reason many of us stopped.

The Industrialization of Latino Food Has Been Going On for Over a Century

What España cataloged in a carousel post is the latest chapter of a much older pattern. Historian Jeffrey M. Pilcher, writing for the National Park Service’s American Latino Theme Study, traces the industrial appropriation of Latino food to the 19th century. As Mexican street vendors known as the “Chili Queens” made their cooking a fixture of civic life and culinary tourism in cities like San Antonio, businessmen moved in to package and mass-market processed versions: chili powder, canned tamales, and what Pilcher describes as ersatz products that advertisers claimed were “more wholesome than the originals.” After decades of canned chili, Pilcher writes, many people did not even recognize chili con carne’s Mexican roots.

The pattern has repeated itself at a larger scale with each generation since. McCormick acquired Cholula, the Mexican hot sauce, for $800 million in 2020, per Food Dive. PepsiCo acquired Siete Foods, a family-owned Hispanic-American brand known for grain-free, clean-label products, for $1.2 billion in 2024, per Just Food.

And, hey, it makes sense. At least, numeric sense.

Latino buying power in the United States has reached $1.9 trillion, an 87 percent increase over the past decade. That figure explains why every major consumer packaged goods company now has a Latino product line. And why so many of those lines, as España documents, use cultural recognition as packaging while replacing the cultural content with something that costs less to produce and lasts longer on a shelf.

The Same Companies That Profit Off Latino Food Culture Spend Their Ad Budgets Targeting Latino Families With the Worst of It

España’s list has a second dimension that corporate PR tends to ignore. A 2022 study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut, cited by Salud America, found that 19 companies were responsible for 75 percent of all food and beverage TV advertising spending, 79 percent of Spanish-language TV advertising, and 82 percent of Black-targeted TV advertising. Candy, sugary drinks, snacks, and cereals made up three-quarters of Spanish-language TV ad spending in 2021. This is up from approximately half in 2017.

Mind you, this is right in the midst of Trump’s America.

The companies that profit from the Latino food market are also the ones directing its most heavily sugared, most sodium-loaded, most additive-dense products back at Latino families at a rate that outpaces what they spend reaching any other demographic.

“Companies express how much they respect the culture and concerns of Black and Hispanic communities,” said Fran Fleming-Milici, director of Marketing Initiatives at the Rudd Center and co-author of the study, per Salud America, “but at the same time, they appear to ignore the negative health impacts of the products they promote.”

The Circana research firm found that Hispanic consumers account for 16 percent of overall consumer packaged goods growth in the U.S., despite representing 14 percent of households, a community outperforming its share of the market and being rewarded with disproportionate exposure to its least nutritious products.

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